Storage configuration can help improve the performance of VM in virtual environment and let’s see how VMware vVols optimize traditional storage.
Updated by Nick Zhao on 2024/01/24
Storage is an important part of virtual environment and good configuration can improve the performance of VM and simply later management. VMFS datastore is often used in VMware environment, but there are some disadvantages in VMFS datastore so VMware releases vVols for users to optimize the performance of storage.
vVols, Virtual Volumes, a new feature in VMware vSphere to let users replace VMFS datastore. It consists of vVol Device, Protocol End Point, Storage Container, VASA Provider and Array, virtualizing SAN/NAS arrays, enabling a more efficient operational model optimized for virtualized environments and centered on the application instead of the infrastructure.
With vVols, process automation is realized to avoid the delay in storage configuration between VMware administrator and storage administrator.
On the one hand, the requirements for storage in virtual environment are different from those in traditional environment. VMs are often stored in shared storage to meet the requirements of related features like vMotion, HA, Storage vMotion, FT, etc., because shared storage is needed during VM migration.
On the other hand, when there are massive VMs in virtual environment, advanced features like VM snapshot, replication, etc., shared storage is often used to batch handling related jobs without influencing the performance of host. As a result, there is the problem of VM storage management and storage performance optimization in large-scale virtual environment.
Before the release of vVols, VMware and the mainstream storage vendors released related solutions to mutually improve application compatibility. For example, VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) can provide API for VM by storage system to optimize performance and VASA (VMWare vSphere Storage API - Storage Awareness) can provide program interface to make vSphere vCenter to recognize the capabilities of storage arrays. However, the major problem has not been solved the VMDK and storage are still “strangers”.
In the virtual environment, the vmdk files of VMs are stored in the LUN but the vmdk files can realize the existence of LUN and at the same time the LUN can feel whether the VMDK files are busy or idle so there is no way to optimize the performance. As a result, vVols is actually used to make the storage recognize the existence of virtual LUN (vmdk).
The major benefits of vVols include:
Operational transformation with vVols when data services are enabled at the application level
Improved storage utilization with granular level provisioning
Common management using Policy Based Management
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Storage is an important part of virtual environment and optimizing storage can optimize the performance of virtual environment and VMware vVols is the feature to lets users replacing traditional VMFS environment.
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